Brussels for Breakfast

Held on Tuesday, February 14, 2017.

With support from Grant Thornton.

Speakers

Graham Bishop (independent consultant, grahambishop.com)

Mark Hoban (International Regulatory Strategy Group).

Agenda

February 14 is an appropriate date for our monthly love-in with Graham Bishop – the UK’s premier snapper-up of unconsidered Euro-trifles, whose grahambishop.com is (IMHO) the best source of detailed information on what is really going on in the gilded corridors of the Brussels institutions. He has been anchoring our breakfast meetings for over 10 years, and he remains as devout a euro-enthusiast as ever – which is some achievement given developments over the last year or so.

But he is not alone. Indeed, this month, he will share the platform with an especially distinguished guest.

Most of us will remember Mark Hoban as a particularly efficacious Financial Secretary to the Treasury – a post he held for two and a half years, before being promoted to Minister for Employment in September 2012. While at the Treasury, he was responsible for driving through the new, post-crisis regulatory framework and for implementing the recommendations of the Vickers Report. He also had day-to-day responsibility for European strategy, working closely with EU Commissioners, the EP and individual MEPs. He is now Chairman of Flood Re, an NED of the London Stock Exchange, a Senior Advisor to IHS Markit, a member of PwC’s Advisory Board – and Chairman of the International Regulatory Strategy Group (IRSG).

The IRSG, co-sponsored by TheCityUK and The City of London Corporation, works to promote open and competitive capital markets globally – in the spirit of which it has just published The EU's Third Country Regimes and Alternatives to Passporting. As a pragmatic look at what “hard Brexit” means legally for firms on both sides of the Channel, it pulls few punches.

We are delighted that Mark has agreed to talk about the IRSG’s conclusions – and to contribute more generally on European regulation.

That said, as always, B4B is a caring and sharing experience – and there will be many people in the room with thoughts of their own. If you (or a colleague) would like to join us, would you please let us know as soon as possible by emailing alex@csfi.org or by calling the Centre on 0207 621 1056. As usual (thanks to the generosity of our friends at Grant Thornton), there will be coffee, tea and plenty of buns.